Micromax launched Superfone A50 Ninja last week at a price tag of Rs 4,999. It is an affordable smartphone running Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system powered by a 650 MHz processor. It sports a 7.9-cm multi-touch capacitive screen and is a dual SIM phone. Apart from the regular features, the Superfone A50 Ninja comes with an extra-ordinary artificial intelligence speech handset assistant (AISHA). But is it similar to the intelligent personal assistant application app in Apple's iPhone 4S? In an e-mail interview with Rahul Sharma, co-founder, Micromax Informatics Ltd, we find out more about AISHA's abilities and what all it can do like Apple's SIRI.
Artificial Intelligence Speech Handset Assistant (AISHA) is a voice recognition tool through which users can search on Google, view stock market details, know phone status, movie reviews, make calls, read news of desired locations, know horoscopes and much more. AISHA is definitely an intelligent voice recognition app like SIRI, which has been designed keeping in mind the needs of the Indian customers. With AISHA, the users can receive location-relevant information. For example:- if the users want to search for a Pizza outlet nearby their location, AISHA will call out the most relevant result.
Just like with SIRI, users can definitely perform functions such as send messages, call, listen to music and search for contacts through in-built speech recognition apps. However, AISHA has some really very interesting and utility features. AISHA can perform a lot of functions which SIRI cannot. Users just need to ask AISHA for movie reviews, song lyrics, recipe search and through back-end tie-ups, AISHA can come up with relevant results. Additionally, AISHA also helps in keeping users up to date on the latest news with features powered by Twitter and Bing. The differentiating factors between the two are mostly related to the tie-ups both the apps have.
Just like with SIRI, users can definitely perform functions such as send messages, call, listen to music and search for contacts through in-built speech recognition apps. However, AISHA has some really very interesting and utility features. AISHA can perform a lot of functions which SIRI cannot. Users just need to ask AISHA for movie reviews, song lyrics, recipe search and through back-end tie-ups, AISHA can come up with relevant results. Additionally, AISHA also helps in keeping users up to date on the latest news with features powered by Twitter and Bing. The differentiating factors between the two are mostly related to the tie-ups both the apps have.
AISHA is an application that translates words into action. If the users need to send a message, they just need to say “Send message to 'name of the person' and then say the message”. Similarly, if the users need to search for something online, they just need to say “Google 'name of the topic'”. AISHA immediately understands the words and shows you relevant results for the queries. Likewise, if users have missed certain important calls or messages, then AISHA can even give a missed call update, read messages and even reply to those messages. If one is looking for an outing and wants to check the weather conditions, he or she can just ask - “what is the weather like in 'location'?”
Superfone A50 Ninja runs Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread and cannot be upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich. As the available specification of the phone does not support the Android 4.0 version the facility is made unavailable. However, with Gingerbread, the phone comes up with some of the quality features and offers a good performance.